While I agree with D. Patrick Miller wholeheartedly that prisons should exist solely for the positive transformation of their inmates into contributing members of society, I believe he totally misses the point of the death penalty. It is tragic testimony to the current popularity of the belief in vengeance when caring and intelligent people say that they dont even care whether the death penalty actually deters crime; they just like capital punishment as a symbol. What would I do if I lost another child?". They spent the next two days purchasing ammunition and practicing the robbery in a rural area near Miramar Lake. The photographs, Sharron Mankins said, are too painful to display. Federal Circuits, 9th Cir. WebRobert Alton Harris was an American car thief, burglar, kidnapper and murderer who was executed at San Quentin State Prison in 1992 for the 1978 murders of two teenage boys They dropped by their fathers home. It explains that we can begin to perceive the real world by making a simple but very radical choice: Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. In each issue of The Sun youll find some of the most radically intimate and socially conscious writing being published today. A flurry of legal appeals kept delaying what became the states first execution in 25 years. Miller assumes that suppressing criminals is about vengeance. His wife Evelyn, one of 11 children from a poor Cherokee family in Oklahoma, took her first drink by age 8. Deputies in San Diego lead Robert Alton Harris from courtroom in 1979 after he was convicted of kidnap murders of two teenage boys. Knowledge of their whereabouts would not materially change his situation, since they appear to be the cause of his delinquency and would offer nothing in the way of stable planning, the report said. Harris was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was abused as a child. WebRobert Alton Harris: Birthdate: May 18, 1909: Death: June 01, 1990 (81) Haskell County, Texas, United States Immediate Family: Son of Fletcher Harris and Holland Harris Since the body is always vulnerable to damage and destruction, our lives are constricted by our perpetual service to fear, self-defense, and vengeance. People like Miller can teach and write only so long as the state has the power to crush thugs. In 1978, Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Marcus Harris, went to a fast food restaurant and abducted two teenage boys. The adult Robert Alton Harris lost his right to live. His mother abandoned him at age 14 and he was soon after placed into juvenile detention after stealing another car. SAN DIEGO -- The last time Sharron Mankins saw her son, Michael Baker, she was piling him and her five other children into the family car for the drive to the local high school where they watched the neighborhood's Fourth of July fireworks in 1978. In short, a political stance against the death penalty must be metaphysically daring. Chief among my concerns, of course, is the damage your decision may do to the publics understanding of fetal alcohol syndrome.. The Harris Robert Alton Harris was executed by gas chamber in 1978 for murder. But because of Harris, I never got the opportunity.". Robert spent four months in juvenile hall at age 13 for stealing a car. He and his older brother Kenneth decided to show a neighbor, James Wheeler, how to fight. Human murderers dont get off the hook because we can punish them. "The politicians are making a name for themselves off my loss. Kroll said a television has been removed from Harris cell, but that he has books. On July 5, 1978, Harris and his younger brother commandeered a car occupied by two 16-year-old boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker, ordered them to drive to a remote area, then killed them. In another legal move Friday trying to spare Harris, his attorneys filed a federal civil rights suit in San Francisco seeking to block the execution on grounds that the use of lethal gas is a violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Thats life. None of this was true, Magris knows today, but he asserts that the idea that he came from criminal stock was a powerful influence on him. I was leading an exemplary life in the daytime as a dancer, he recalls. Our sense of civilization requires that this someone be guilty of murder. Our primal human nature will always scream out to fight or flee in response to attack, but we have the conscience to choose thoughtfully how well respond, whether with exquisitely planned, torturous vengeance, or with prayer and forgiveness, or with something else altogether. We are horrified by the lengths to which people like Harris pursue vengeance, but not to the point of surrendering our own belief in vengeance entirely. The result is a lesson in blame, for all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it. Nothing much had changed. We seem studiously to avoid many other choices: to forgive without condoning or committing further violence ourselves; to lay down our arms; to turn the other cheek or even to try to love our perceived enemies. This story was originally published in The San Diego Union-Tribune on April 21, 1992. Robert Alton Harris (January 15, 1953 April 21, 1992) was an American car thief, burglar, kidnapper and murderer who was executed at San Quentin State Prison in 1992 for the 1978 murders of two teenage boys in San Diego. Such questioning will not immediately yield a deathless world of spirit, for we have gone too deep into our illusions for that. At 4:01 a.m., guards entered the chamber and unstrapped Harris from the chair. Kolender, who was chief of police when Harris killed the two boys, said he hopes the justice system learns from the lengthy legal proceedings -- both from the last-minute appeals and the tedious litigation that blocked the execution for years. "We were just traumatized . . The Supreme Court of the United States reimposed Harris' death sentence in Pulley v. Harris (1984), reversing the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 72. He has spoken publicly against capital punishment alongside his surviving victim, Dennis Tapp. D. Patrick Millers essay A Brutal Sadness [August 1993] challenges the often-heard but indefensible view that vengeance is justice. Attempting to punish nature for causing death would seem equally ludicrous to anyone, while punishing people for causing death is considered a rational form of justice. Why? Thus I am satisfied that my essay did indeed have the effect I intended upon Elbinger: making him question his own belief in vengeance. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. Soon after his release in 1978, he drove from San Diego to Visalia to attend a Fourth of July picnic with his family; his mother, serving time for bank robbery, was out on parole. [8] Robert Harris commandeered Mayeski's car and ordered him to drive to Miramar Lake, with Daniel Harris following in another vehicle. Among the arresting officers was Steve Baker, 49, now a detective with the San Diego Police Department. "We're frustrated with the justice system," Mankins said. He looked absolutely inhuman. God and nature get off the hook for apparently committing murders because we have no way of punishing either of them. Think of Gandhi. Robert told the boys to "Quit crying, and die like men", then shot both boys multiple times. It was a solemn act. There's something wrong with a system where we pay a federal judge or any judge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year not to make a decision. They settled at a farm labor camp outside Visalia. 1 Along with many other challenges to the conviction and sentence, Back in the late 1970s, Harris and his teenage brother, Daniel, stole hamburgers from their young victims' bodies after shooting them in a car robbery. Do we need more variations on the Christian pie-in-the-sky viewpoint? Education and the great assumption of responsibility by individual citizens are indeed how we will get to a state of merciful realization. After Robert shot When I feel angry and vengeful, I attempt to face those feelings squarely and completely, and then I decide whether I want them to drive my behavior. 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! Giving up the death penalty for good would mean challenging some of our most personal, most firmly embedded beliefs, as well as our social policies. Within twenty minutes Harris was dead, his asphyxiation videotaped to help authorities determine whether execution by gas constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.. Copyright 19742023 The Sun. [5] The Harris brothers then returned to Robert's Mira Mesa home and allegedly finished the victims' half-eaten cheeseburgers while Robert boasted about the killings. A full seven minutes passed -- pierced by intermittent moans, gasps and convulsions -- before it seemed that Robert Harris mind and his body had fully passed into unconsciousness, Hearn said. At the political level, teaching peace means opposing the death penalty and promoting the sort of resocialization programs that David Magris suggests for our prisons: these would decrease human suffering, save money, and provide a truly sensible route to the lessening of crime and violence in our society. On July 2, Daniel stole two guns from a neighbor's house in Visalia, California, and the two drove to San Diego that night. Nothing about this identity should be forgiven; it should die. Shall we keep people with such damaged consciences alive and try to reform them? [6], Sometime in May or June 1978, Robert, then aged 25, asked his brother Daniel, 18, for help in planning a bank robbery. Harris pleaded guilty to a federal charge of bank robbery and received a 25-year sentence.[9]. "I wish things could have been different. We love getting letters to the editor for our Correspondence section. Atheists may substitute the forces of nature for the idea of God, but the basic logic is unchanged. A pragmatic friend of mine views capital punishment as a bookkeeping function, coldly arguing that its the only way to guarantee that those irredeemable murderers will not kill again. Miller draws from a set of doctrinal preconceptions (A Course in Miracles) to lay a massive guilt trip, not on criminals, who elicit his forgiveness and understanding, but on the innocent people they rape, rob, and mutilate. Almost 14 years have passed since that afternoon when murder shattered the lives of two families. In 1978, at age 25, Harris was released again, despite warnings from the Imperial County Sheriffs Department to parole authorities that Harris was in need of psychiatric attention.. Steve Baker said in an interview that he has to contend with loss and regret. Any violent or sudden death, whether through murder or not, is quite different. Wheeler died. A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Howard B. Turrentine at 9 a.m. today. We already live in a culture committed to denying the reality of death. On his twenty-first birthday, his credentials as a petty criminal well established, Magris and his pals decided to do a robbery. Unable to start the car, Robert Harris decided to steal another car in which two youthsJohn Mayeski and Michael Bakerwere eating lunch. And then you have to decide to become stronger than your fear. The only true way to get clean and clear, to be of good conscience and right with God, is to deal with the issues as they really are: loss and an incredible amount of pain. [15] That evening, a group of Ninth Circuit judges ordered the execution stayed while the circuit considered granting en banc consideration of his lawsuit. His mother had recently been put on parole for bank robbery. Thus, forgiveness is an inherently paradoxical spiritual path. He was arrested less than an hour after the robbery and charged with murder, auto theft, kidnapping, burglary, and bank robbery. It is completely savage and completely insane. Robert Davis was Robert Alton Harris Jr. Death is not merciful either way. In the last few years I have taken up a discipline of forgiveness, which means I have decided against vengeance as a guide. Robert Alton Harris was gassed to death at sunrise on April 21, 1992, the first person to be executed by the state of California in twenty-five years. But you do yourself an injustice when you feel that your victimization justifies somebodys execution or degradation in prison. [15] That night, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision vacating the Ninth Circuit's stays and allowing the execution to proceed, by a vote of 72. Robert Alton Harris' final words read out loud by warden Daniel Vasquez, Video footage of the crime and the conviction of Robert A Harris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "From Birth to Death Row, Violence Surrounded Harris", "California Execution Stayed: State Is Appealing to High Court", "Best friends, their lives ended on a summer day", "An Argument That Goes Back to the Womb: The Demedicalization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, 19731992,", "The Lawless Execution of Robert Alton Harris", "Equity and Hierarchy: Reflections on the Harris Execution", "The Supreme Court, The Death Penalty, and The Harris Case", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Alton_Harris&oldid=1148067390, 20th-century executions of American people, American people convicted of manslaughter, People executed by California by gas chamber, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 April 2023, at 21:45. A person with mature faith can live a full life under any circumstances, as David Magriss transformation shows. Robert joked and laughed with them awhile, then told them to start walking away. On July 2, Daniel stole two guns from a neighbor's house in Visalia, California, and the two drove to San Diego that night. We invented death as our answer to Gods invention of eternal life, for our creative powers are God-like, though we have used them to make a chaotic world of beauty and death mixed together. The wackos who commit torturous murders are not equal to other human lives. I am not so arrogant as to presume that I understand the ancient hard wiring of human nature. Harris was sentenced to die 13 years ago for killing 16-year-olds John Mayeski and Michael Baker in 1978. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. For this reason alone, not for vengeance or punishment, the death penalty will continue to be demanded until prison reforms have been so perfected that a criminal is no longer dangerous once his sentence is served. I do not mean abortion lifts up humanity. Today Harris became the 502nd person to be put to death by the state of California. Think of the students in Tiananmen Square. Its absolutely true, as Robert Becker suggests, that killing a murderer prevents him from killing again. Then something changed, 7 hospitalized after driver in stolen car runs red light in San Bernardino, police say, Barstow police investigating after officer caught on video hitting man with a baton, Northern California town on edge after second fatal stabbing in a week, Man found guilty of murdering teens who ding-dong-ditched his house, Sacramento, San Francisco mayors take shots at each others city before NBA playoff game. When Robbie was 1 1/2 years old, Harris pummeled him with a bamboo cane. He made his way to Oklahoma to live with his sister Barbara and brother Randy and was expelled from the eighth grade after his first day at school. For every monk who devoted his life to God, there were a hundred barbarians whose idea of a good time was to burn his books and throw him down a well. The older Harris brother, Randall, confirmed Daniels latest account of the facts in a sworn affidavit, noting that Daniel had confessed a few years after leaving prison that his rifle went off first and that Robert then just went crazy and opened fire. That is the method used by most states with death-penalty laws. Barbara enrolled him in the eighth grade but, after a day, the school kicked him out. The brothers ordered the teens to drive to a lake, then forced them to kneel. Robert's first [5] He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and imprisoned in San Luis Obispo;[2] during his imprisonment Harris' wife filed for divorce. Daniel Harris claims that when he told authorities this, they threatened him with the death penalty if he made such statements at his brothers trial. Give me all the statistics you want to about how it doesnt deter crime; Ill keep the death penalty as a symbol of the ultimate consequence the violent must face. From the archives: Time runs out for killer of 2 youths here Former San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender, who watched Harris die, said the execution sent a message that killers will face justice. At Miramar Lake, the Harris brothers ordered the boys to kneel, whereupon the boys began to pray. Sgt. [5] A witness to the robbery followed the Harrises to their home and notified police. SAN FRANCISCO -- Friends and family eulogized executed killer Robert Alton Harris Friday as a man who had found peace of mind while awaiting his fate on Finding a way to do that would greatly improve the bottom line of our societal bookkeeping. Id say you have a right as a victim or loved one of a victim to get resolution, he says. Reentry programs would enable prisoners to return to society more smoothly, says Magris, instead of creating the current mind-set that the only way I can make it is in prison, because thats the only place where they get three meals, a cot, and a monthly pittance to buy cigarettes, potato chips, and drugs. The voice of the Course identifies itself as the living consciousness of Jesus Christ and offers a number of corrections to modern Christian beliefs. Rev. They stole guns from a neighbor, returned to San Diego, and took target practice. If it costs fifty thousand dollars a year to secure a prisoner, thats one million dollars over twenty years. Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceSign Up For Our NewslettersSite Map, Copyright 2023, The San Diego Union-Tribune |. I agree with Miller that our prison system is an utterly inadequate answer to the problem of crime. They stole guns from a neighbor, At San Quentin prison, where Harris is under a deathwatch, a spokesman said Wilsons rejection of clemency had turned Harris more somber. Then Robert Harris ate the boys' hamburgers, laughing at the blood that gushed from Mayeski's fatal head wound. I want them locked up, or killed, to keep their guns out of my face and to save me the expense of hiring guards and turning my home into a fortress, which is what people in my social class had to do before there were prisons. If you know better and do it anyway, youre not crazy just guilty. He showed no change in expression, Hearn said. Released at age nineteen, he moved near his father to Chula Vista, California, where he found work as a welder, married, and fathered a son. A last-ditch legal attempt to save Robert Alton Harris turned on the argument that he may have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. Letting the victim sentence the criminal, within guidelines of course, would personalize the concept of justice, empower the victim, and (if he werent executed) allow the offender to make amends by producing wealth instead of draining it. The Course is a one-year, self-study curriculum that guides its students toward an instinctive, utilitarian spirituality by restoring their contact with what it calls the Internal Teacher. Published in 1976, the Course was written down over a period of seven years by Columbia University research psychologist Helen Schucman, who claimed to hear a soundless voice giving her a compelling inner dictation. Schucman, who died in 1981, never claimed authorship of the Course. WebOn July 5, 1978, Robert and his brother Daniel attempted to hotwire a car they intended to use in a bank robbery. But around age ten Magris learned that the man in the photographs around his house was his biological father a bad man, he was told, who was in prison for murder, a Mafioso whose brothers and sisters were pimps and whores. To change human nature religions and belief systems and psychology never tire of this rhetoric. We know we must still work for such a life and that we may not obtain it owing to our own failures, misfortunes, and sins. Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language. "[15], Harris was executed on April 21, 1992, in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison the first execution in California in 25 years. His victims were not responsible for his unhappy childhood and should not have paid with their lives for the irresponsibility of his parents. Education and responsibility are what I pursue as a writer and a human being. Shall we study them like lab rats? The investigation revealed that at 10:30 a.m. on July 5, 1978, the defendant and co In fact, Beckers calculations to the contrary, capital punishment is much more expensive than life imprisonment, and it will continue to be unless we so greatly shorten the appeals process that we increase the proportion of innocent people who are executed. ", After hearing that Wilson denied Harris's petition for clemency, Sharron Mankins told reporters, "This is just what we were waiting to hear.". The only way to have peace is to teach peace. I dont know what the answer is, but its not forgiveness, and its not letting prisoners out. Ive seen guys with so many holes in them you couldnt count them. Last night in Sacramento from his Capitol office, Gov. His execution was the first in the state of California since 1967. The abrupt command ended a grueling all-night marathon that court employees said was unlike anything in recent memory. But even as the Supreme Court was considering that appeal and just two hours before Harris scheduled 12:01 a.m. execution, 10 judges on the federal appeals court issued a second stay of Harris execution based on a defense claim that the use of cyanide gas was an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. He was Michael's father and at the time had been divorced from Sharron Mankins for almost 12 years. It helps us to understand what forgiveness really is: not the self-sacrificing acceptance of wrongs that have been done to us, but rather the willingness to recover a long-abandoned world of peace by questioning both the sanity and reality of the world we have built on vengeance.
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